Lollapalooza Report: Saturday [Amy Phillips]

Welcome to our coverage of Lollapalooza 2008, which will continue through the weekend and conclude Monday. Check back for reports from Joshua Klein, Amy Phillips, Scott Plagenhoef, and Matthew Solarski.

Contrary to popular belief, Mark Lanegan does not melt when exposed to sunlight. The gravel-voiced former Screaming Trees frontman is the kind of figure you'd be more likely to expect to find creeping up behind you in a dark alley than singing to a crowd of happy, drunken revelers enjoying the brilliant midday sun at a lakefront park. But there he was, growling "oh heaven, it's quite a climb" as a couple in ironic sunglasses in front of me made out blissfully and obliviously. To Lanegan's credit (or detriment?), he stood as hulking and immobile on the AT&T stage at 2:30 in the afternoon as he had at 2:30 in the morning at the Metro when the Gutter Twins played Chicago this spring.

Yesterday, Josh Klein described the "cognitive dissonance" of the Kills' daytime Lolla set, and the same could be said for the Gutter Twins': it was a bit of a mindfuck. Head Twin (and ex-Afghan Whigs main man) Greg Dulli was not the fire-starting testifier he usually is on stage; rather, he seemed defeated by the situation. Maybe it was the fact that he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and vest and was just too damn hot to move, but Dulli barely acted interested in the task at hand, sluggishly going through the motions. Even when he sat down at a keyboard for a cover of José González's "Down the Line", usually a cathartic highlight of the Gutter Twins' set, he just didn't seem into it. As he and Lanegan built the song's climax of "don't let the darkness eat you up," there was no darkness to be found.

It's a shame, too, because the band sounded great. The monster riff that anchors "Idle Hands" (from the Twins' Sub Pop debut Saturnalia ) is built for ringing out over an enormous crowd, as is the soaring chorus of the Twilight Singers' "Bonnie Brae", which also made an appearance. But between the crowd's confusion/indifference and the band's lack of energy, it was a wasted opportunity.

Jamie Lidell [5:30 p.m.]

Photos by Joseph Mohan

At last year's Pitchfork Music Festival, all Jamie Lidell needed to deliver a show-stopping performance was a laptop, a microphone, and an elaborate headdress. For Lollapalooza, he brought a full band, including a bassist in an Elvis jumpsuit and a saxophonist in a bathrobe and straw hat. Party time!

Dressed like David Bowie circa Let's Dance , Lidell seems to be coming into his own as a showman. He strutted and pranced in the geeky/sexy way that Jarvis Cocker has trademarked, prompting several girlish screams of "I love you, Jamie!!!" from the audience. (The fact that he wasn't wearing a shirt under his blazer certainly upped the sex symbol factor.) Josh Klein turned to me and asked, "Do you think he practices this in front of the mirror?" Yes. He definitely does.

One of the complaints frequently registered about Lidell's most recent album, Jim , is that it just isn't weird enough. It's a straightforward soul record, devoid of the quirks that make Lidell so loveable. But those quirks were flaunted in style during his Lolla set. Barely halfway in, he broke out the T-Pain Autotune effects, and soon enough, "Out of My System" was transformed into a beatboxing freakout. As Lidell furiously played with the bells and whistles on his computer and mixer, the rest of the band danced their way off stage, into the crowd…and disappeared. For a long time.

But the crowd was already putty in Lidell's hands, and they went wild as he stretched out into more experimental territory, going back to his IDM roots with an extended section of electronic beats and voice manipulations. At a huge, daunting festival like Lollapalooza, where so many acts deliver rote, uninspired sets, someone as unpredictable as Lidell can thrive, especially when their music is as feel-good as his. [ Even Cubs announcers Len Kasper and Bob Brenly gave the "Jamie Lydell" set some props in their Sunday broadcast...aww, Chad Gaudin, sonofacock-- Ed. ]

By the time the band jumped back in for "Where'd You Go?", the crowd was so pumped, he could have gone off on a Tuvan throat-singing detour and nobody would have cared. Instead, Lidell brought a big, happy finale, beginning "Multiply" as an a cappella, barbershop quartet-style hoedown, and ending it by jumping into the crowd and giving the microphone to any audience member who wanted to shout "so tired!"

Can somebody please make this man hugely famous, like, now?

Battles [6:30 p.m.]

Photos by Joseph Mohan

Any Battles show is intense, but a Battles show packed with stoked moshers, taking place on a makeshift stage in a parking lot, at the precise moment of the evening that the sun is slanting right into the performers' eyes, bathing the whole band in a golden sheen? Fucking insanity .

Barely half a song in, the Battles dudes had already sweat enough to drown a small animal. But they sure looked dapper in those long-sleeved dress shirts of theirs. At that moment, I realized something: Has anybody ever pointed out just how darn sexy a Battles performance is? Here are these four strapping gentlemen, pounding the shit out of their instruments with such precision and skill it's like surgery, and such athleticism it's like a gymnastics competition. And they make such libidinous noise, each song anchored in primal rutting rhythms. Hot stuff.

The set's climax came with "Atlas", naturally, a song that has, somewhat improbably, become a kind of hit with a certain demographic. (Nerds!) As soon as Battles' extended, creeping intro broke into the main riff of the song, the mosh pit exploded. Crowd surfers popped up, and two shirtless dudes even made it on stage to dance for awhile before being kicked off by security.

Wilco [8:30 pm]

Photo by Kirstie Shanley *

About halfway through Wilco's set, I thought that I already had my review figured out: Make a joke about Barack Obama not showing up, make a joke about how the band's snazzy rhinestoned Nudie suits couldn't cover up the numbing mediocrity of the music on their last two albums. Point out that "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" (which they played second) is still a fucking amazing song, and Nels Cline is still a fucking amazing guitar player (see: his solo on "Spiders [Kidsmoke]"). Say something about how the whole thing was pleasant but dull, whatever.

But then, during "Pot Kettle Black", a guy in a Hawaiian shirt standing next to me with a beer in his hand asked me how I was enjoying the show. I said I was kind of bored. He looked stunned. "But it's such a nice night!" he exclaimed. "Everybody's having such a good time!" He waved his arms around to indicate all of the happy people around us.

You know what? Fuck it. He's right. How can I hate on a Wilco show on a beautiful (and not humid!) night in downtown Chicago? Regular dudes having a good time making music for regular people having a good time listening to them. Couples with their arms around each other, families sitting on picnic blankets, high school kids sneaking cigarettes. Everybody singing along to "A Shot in the Arm".

I'm not that mean. It was a great time. There, I said it.

A couple of newsy notes: Wilco played a new song, apparently called "One Wing". It started out as a pretty, melancholy jam with lyrics falling squarely in the Tweedy self-hatred canon ("I was a curse," "I cast a shadow on this world," etc.) But then it built to a nasty, noisy climax complete with a ripping Cline solo. Right on.

Also, former Cardinals fan Jeff Tweedy threw out the first pitch at the Cubs game today, and Wilco led "Take Me out to the Ballgame" during the seventh-inning stretch-- a job done yesterday by Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello. Yay, Chicago! [ And...woot, back-to-back homers by Reed Johnson and Alfonso Soriano! In your face, Milwaukee.-- Ed. ]